How to install the Candy icon theme in Linux

Candy is an elegant, gradient style theme for the Linux desktop. It is colorful, and unique, and is unlike any other icon theme on the Linux platform. If you’re looking for a great new set of icons for your desktop and are sick of the popular themes, take a chance and install this theme with the instructions below!

Download the Candy icon theme

To get your hands on the Candy icon theme, you must download it from the Gnome-look Linux theme website. Using this link here, go to the official Candy Gnome-look.org page.

Once you’ve made it to the Gnome-look.org page for Candy, find the “Files” button and click on it with the mouse to go to the download section. Then, download the item in the list with the name of “candy-icons.tar.xz.”

In addition to getting the Candy icon theme on Gnome-look.org, it is also possible to download the source code from the project’s GitHub page. However, we do not recommend going this route to install Candy unless you are an advanced Linux user and know how Git works.

Extracting the Candy icon theme

Now that the Candy icon theme is downloaded to your Linux PC in the form of a TarXZ archive, you must go through the process of extracting the contents of the archive. To do this, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, when the terminal window is open,  use the tar command to extract the Candy theme archive fully.

tar xvf ~/Downloads/candy-icons.tar.xz

When the extraction process is complete, a folder with the name of “candy-icons” will appear in your “Downloads” directory. To view the contents of this folder, run the following ls command.

ls candy-icons

Install Candy icon theme

The Candy icon theme is fully extracted in the “Downloads” directory. Now it is time to install the icon theme to your Linux computer. To do this, open up a terminal window and use the CD command to move the terminal to the “Downloads” directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Now that the terminal window is in the “Downloads” directory on your Linux PC follow the installation instructions outlined below to get the Candy icon theme working correctly.

Set up for single-user

Setting up the Candy icon theme for a “single-user” means that only the user that the theme is set up on will have access to the icon theme. If you do not plan to give access to the Candy icon theme to any other user on your Linux PC, go this route for installing it.

To start the installation of the Candy icon theme as a single user, create the new “.icons” folder in your home directory with the mkdir command.

mkdir -p ~/.icons

After creating the new “.icons” directory, use the CD command and move the command-line session into the “Downloads” folder, where the extracted Candy icon files are located.

cd ~/Downloads

Once inside of the “Downloads” directory, use the mv command to place the Candy icons into the “.icons” folder you created earlier.

mv candy-icons ~/.icons

When the command is complete, you can run the ls command to view the “.icons” directory to confirm the files are there.

ls ~/.icons | grep candy-icons

Set up system-wide

Setting up the Candy icon theme system-wide on Linux means that every user has access to the icons, not just one user. To start the installation, use the CD command to move the terminal window into the “Downloads” directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Inside of the “Downloads” directory, use the sudo -s command to transition the terminal window into root mode. Do not use the su command, as it will take you out of the “Download” folder.

sudo -s

Once the terminal window has root access, use the mv command to place the Candy icon files into the “/usr/share/icons/.” directory.

mv candy-icons /usr/share/icons/

After the mv command finishes placing the Candy icon files into the system icon directory, use ls to verify that all the files are there.

ls | grep candy-icons

Activate Candy icon theme on Linux

The Candy icon theme is installed on your Linux computer. However, it is not in use on the desktop. To use the Candy icon theme on your desktop, you must change the default system icons.

To change the default icons on the Linux desktop, open up “System Settings.” Then, with “System Settings” open, look for the “Appearance” or “Icons” option, and click on it to set Candy as the default icon theme on your Linux PC.

Having trouble setting up the Candy icon theme on your Linux PC? Take a look at the list below to learn how to set icon themes on all major Linux desktop environments.